By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Mining company Sibanye-Stillwater says its employees’ demands are unaffordable, with the strike now into a third month after unions rejected the firm’s improved wage increase offer tabled earlier in April.
The company says it’s been trying to negotiate with unions for about 10 months now and many adjustments have been made.
Sibanye-Stillwater’s spokesperson James Wellsted told ENCA that: “It’s been about a 10-month long process, it’s been an extended engagement.
At the end of last year [2021] before the December break we actually paid back-pay on the current offer that we had on the table at that time to employees so that they would go home, at least with something, for the December break to share with their families. At that point, it was R450.
“We’ve subsequently moved our offer a number of times. On 4 February we offered R700 on the basic increase and R100 live-out allowance and then we recently on 19 April again adjusted that to an R800 basic increase and R50 live-out allowance. That contrasts with the union’s R1,000 demand on basic and R100 live-out allowance. That’s quite a bit higher than where we are.”
Wellsted confirmed the pending meeting with Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe.
He says the company hopes government can offer some intervention.
“I’m not sure exactly what interventions or what proposals will come from that meeting but as I’ve said we haven’t made the decision lightly in terms of the offer – we do need to consider the impact on all stakeholders.
President Cyril Ramaphosa abandoned his Workers’ Day speech in the northwestern city of Rustenburg on Sunday when striking mineworkers stormed the stage.
The workers employed by the Sibanye-Stillwater mine are demanding a wage increase of 1,000 rands per month instead of the 850 rands being offered by the mine.
Ramaphosa had decided to mark Workers’ Day, a public holiday on May 1, by giving a speech to union members in Rustenburg, a mining centre.
The president was booed as he started his address with a call for the striking workers and other members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions to calm down and listen to what he had to say.
“We have heard that you want your 1,000 rands. We will deal with that matter,” Ramaphosa told the protesting workers.
Shortly after that Ramaphosa was forced to give up his message of support altogether when angry miners stormed the field and overwhelmed the police surrounding the stage at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium. Ramaphosa’s security guards whisked him away from the venue.
The striking workers have become even angrier in recent days over reports that Sibanye-Stillwater’s CEO, Neal Froneman, earned more than 300 million rands in 2021 in salary payments and company share schemes.
Rustenburg in the North West province is a tumultuous area for Ramaphosa and governing African National Congress (ANC) party.
Many union members continue to blame them for the Marikana massacre, where 34 miners were shot dead by police during a strike at the Lonmin mine in 2012. Ramaphosa was a non-executive director of Lonmin at the time.
Sunday’s proceedings indicate the challenges that Ramaphosa, a founding member of COSATU and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), faces later this year in his effort to be re-elected head of the ANC. The unions are a key constituency of the party.
Meanwhile the trade union federation said in a statement on Monday, Ramaphosa being chased away from Cosatu’s Worker’s Day rally was “regrettable” and “unacceptable”, but should also serve as a warning to the ANC.
“The Federation has noted the regrettable disruptions that happened in our main rally at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium, Rustenburg in the North-West Province,” reads a statement.